Vincent Ferrini remembered as poet of the people’

Gloucester’s poet laureate Vincent Ferrini died on Dec. 24 as the result of a heart attack. Ferrini, the man affectionately referred to as “Gloucester’s conscience,” was 94.

Terry Doyle

Gloucester’s poet laureate Vincent Ferrini died on Dec. 24 as the result of a heart attack. Ferrini, the man affectionately referred to as “Gloucester’s conscience,” was 94.

Ferrini was, first and foremost, a writer. His daughter, Sheila Ferrini, said her father used to proclaim that he was “thrust from mother’s womb with a pencil in my right hand.”

“He was an astute interpreter of the use of words,” said Sheila Ferrini. “He was self educated, a poet of the people.”

“The public library becomes my step-home,” he wrote in his 1988 autobiography, “Hermit of the Clouds.”

Ferrini moved to Gloucester from Lynn in 1948. Growing up in Lynn during the Great Depression and watching as his father, a shoemaker, struggled, certainly shaped Ferrini’s writing and his opinions about life in general.

“I studied all these people in Lynn and the condition they were in and I had kind of a photographic mind where I could describe them,” said Ferrini in a 2004 interview with Dinah Cardin of North Shore Sunday.

“He had a strong connection to the workers in Lynn,” said Sheila Ferrini. “He made close contacts with people. He was always a very accessible writer.”

Sheila Ferrini recalled a common Christmas gift her father would give her.

“He used to give us paper,” she said. “He always encouraged us to write or scribble or draw what we saw.”

“I live in the unity of word and image. You gotta have both,” said Ferrini in the Cardin interview.

Sheila Ferrini also cited her father’s fervent advocacy for the protection of Gloucester’s waterfront and natural beauty.

“I move with the Earth. I move with the air. I’m in love with it all. I want all people to share it with,” Ferrini told Cardin.

Longtime friend and fellow Gloucester-based writer Jonathan Bayliss, who said Ferrini was the first friend he made when he arrived in Gloucester over 50 years ago, called Ferrini “a poet and a craftsman.”

“He was a very original writer and full of real emotion. He was fearless,” said Bayliss. “He was indefatigable.”

Ferrini was also a friend, contemporary and inspiration to another Gloucester-based writer, the hulking poet Charles Olson. The colossal Olson wrote of Ferrini in his masterwork, “The Maximus Poems,” regarded by many as being among the most important collections of poetry in American history.

Though it has been said that Olson’s mention of Ferrini in ‘Maximus’ was more an attack than an homage, it ensured his place in literary history, guaranteeing that Ferrini’s work would thus be made known to generations of readers to come.

Though he felt spurned, Ferrini still held Olson in the highest esteem as an artist and a friend.

“Love does not/judge/it/is/too busy/making/anew,” wrote Ferrini of his relationship with Olson.

Ferrini’s correspondence included other influential American artists like filmmaker Stan Brakhage and poets Cid Corman and Robert Creeley, all of whom helped shape the avant-garde scene.

Sheila Ferrini said her father, the man who loved to dance and who was recognized on the street by others as the guy who wore peculiar hats, taught her countless lessons, but more important than any was to that she should always observe.

“Not to be content with what you thought you saw. There is always more there than what you first think you see,” she said.

Plans for a memorial service were still under way at press time.

***

An exerpt from ‘The City,’ one of Vincent Ferrini’s poems about Lynn:

The Boss grabbed his shop and settled out of the state

Leaving 1700 families stranded

The Union caved in

At dawn buses and cars carry shoeworkers to far-away open shop towns

And we thousands remaining

Huddled in tenements

Starve in the shadows of dead factories

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.